TWILIGHT ZONE at 50

The New York Times Arts Beat blog ran a post on the 50th anniversary of The Twilight Zone, a show that was a seminal part of my mass media background. It was one of the first prime-time shows that wasn't for kids or wasn't a sitcom that I remember watching regularly. At the time (early to mid 60's, before my adolescence) it seemed part and parcel of my interest in scary movies, and I'm sure it had an influence on my developing reading tastes, which ran toward sci-fi and horror short stories. In college, my girlfriend and I bonded over a shared memory of the climactic line of dialogue from "To Serve Man," a line which has since become a cliche (though I won't spoil it here, just in case) but at the time, when we both recited it simultaneously, we screamed in mock fear and in joy at finding someone who knew such an arcane reference.

The blog post author, Dave Itzkoff, categorizes the episodes into three types: 1) The Classic Switcheroo, which is basically the surprise ending; 2) The Total Apocalypse, which is about the end of the world--and I would argue could include a common variation in which characters are in a world they don't understand, basically experiencing the end of the world they lived in before, as in "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" or "Stopover in a Quiet Town"; 3) The Inexplicably Supernatural, as in the famous Billy Mumy episode "It's a Good Life." Itzkoff includes a fourth category, shows which featured stars before they got famous (Robert Redford, William Shatner), but that's not a genre category--though certainly the ability to see such celebs is a plus for retrospective viewing.

What Itzkoff doesn't mention are the (what were at the time) mainstream liberal humanistic views which were usually expressed in a moral at the end of the story, sometimes quite explicitly, by the shows' creator, host, and writer Rod Serling. Messages about justice, tolerance and race relations were the most obvious ones; my favorite "message" show is probably "I Am the Night, Color Me Black," in which the sun does not come up in places where hatred or injustice seem to have gotten the upper hand (Dallas--mere months after JFK's assassination--and Vietnam are specifically mentioned). But it's not the feel-bad moral that makes the show memorable, it's the creepiness of the event (or non-event) itself, and usually the messages were well couched in such bizarre, supernatural tones that you didn't feel too much like you were being lectured at.

The very phrase "Twilight Zone" has become a pop culture marker; it's used in speeches, songs by Golden Earring, Manhattan Transfer, and 2 Unlimited reference it, and indeed the first few notes of the show's theme (dee-dee-dee-DEE-DEE-dee-dee-dee) have become pop culture shorthand for anything strange and creepy. Some shows were funny, and some were lackluster, but all were strange or at least a little off-kilter and usually the supernatural event in the show was not explained away rationally. After Twilight Zone came The Outer Limits, Night Gallery (also from Serling), Tales of the Unexpected, et al., but I think nothing has ever captured the public's imagination like the original. (Certainly a case could be made that Twilight Zone was heavily influenced by the earlier anthology show Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but the Hitchcock stories, creepy as they were, were always about the real world).

The blog asked for people's favorite episodes, and I came up with a Top 10 which I'll buzz through here. The top 3 are ranked, but the rest are mostly equal:

1) "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" (pictured above) in which a neighborhood tears itself apart when it fears it is under attack from space aliens.

2) "Stopover in a Quiet Town" in which a hungover couple (below) wake up Sunday morning in a strangely quiet small town.

3) "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up" which features a busful of travelers stuck in a diner; they soon come to believe that one of their number might be a Martian.

All three of these basically rely on a surprise ending, but the getting there is so fun, they can be watched over and over again. My other favorites:

"The After Hours" with Anne Francis as a shopper who discovers some strange goings-on on an abandoned floor in a department store.

"Eye of the Beholder" in which a deformed woman undergoes experimental surgery so she'll look like everyone else.

"Living Doll" with Telly Savalas as an abusive husband and father who gets his comeuppance from a talking doll--very creepy episode; just say "My name is Talky Tina..." to anyone who knows this episode and they'll get a chill (Tina is pictured above).

"Night of the Meek," a gentle Christmas fantasy with Art Carney as an alcoholic department store Santa who finds a magical gift bag.

"It's a Good Life" has a great performance by 7-year-old Billy Mumy as a kid with the power to get rid of troublesome people with a glance, by putting them "in the cornfield."

"The Fear" (pictured at left) is set at an isolated cabin where a woman and a sheriff are menaced by what might be a gigantic space monster.

I have to split my 10th place among 2, the aforementioned "I Am the Night, Color Me Black" and "To Serve Man."

Twilight Zone is the only TV series, aside from Friends (and, when Fox gets around to releasing the rest, The Mary Tyler Moore Show), that I own the entirety of on DVD, and it's worth it. I'm not sure what the younger generations feel about the show now, but I suspect many of the episodes would still work on a current audience. They certainly still work on me.